


Husband Material

by EnzymaticWitch



Series: First Second Husband [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M, Not Canon Compliant, References to Depression, References to PTSD, References to Torture, Swearing, a lot of bad things happened to bucky but he's getting ok, but bucky does, cabbage abuse, he means well, kind of mean to tony in this, other characters too - Freeform, references to mental illness, steve says a cuss, the winter soldier doesnt care about nice things, theyll make up eventually
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-22
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2019-03-08 01:55:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13448067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EnzymaticWitch/pseuds/EnzymaticWitch
Summary: Bucky settles in Novi Grad while he tries to piece together who he was and who he is.Then Tony Stark births a malevolent AI that tries to drop the city on the goddamn planet.





	Husband Material

**Author's Note:**

> This was written with me barely remembering what happened in AoU so if you’re here for canon compliance I’m here to disappoint.

The thing about the memory loss is that, while the Soldier doesn’t remember the man on the bridge or who James Buchanan Barnes was, he also doesn’t remember all of the torture. Mostly. It also means that he’ll sometimes be drinking goat milk he purchased from the market and will have a flashback that leaves him a huddled ball of misery under the kitchen table he liberated from a bombed-out house on the outskirts of town.

Novi Grad wasn’t his first choice. Truth be told it wouldn’t be his second or third either. It shares that same general feeling of unease that most countries in the former iron curtain have - either the Russians will creep up on their borders or the Americans will bomb them in the name of freedom. It will happen eventually like it has before. So it’s not his first choice, but the Soldier doesn’t get to make many choices.

The Soldier taps his flesh hand against his mouth, glaring at the map of the region spread out on said kitchen table. His metal hand still clenched around a cabbage, digging in and distorting the vegetable that is valiantly attempting to remain an orb. He had a - _what did the Internet call it? Panic attack, flashback?_ \- moment in the car park near the weekly market. He thankfully already bought his groceries, but he hasn’t been able to unclench his hand since.

It will straighten out eventually, or the Soldier will just live with it. He’s been through worse.

There’s at least one Hydra base in Sokovia, likely nearer to Novi Grad than he thinks. Could be in an old Soviet base or it could be under a school or a hospital in disguise or—

The Soldier crosses another location off the map.

There are a few places left that could House the base. So far, the Soldier managed to find an old non-Hydra Nazi laboratory, an abandoned Soviet prison, and what he thinks is a weird abandoned sex dungeon club. He torched all of them just to be safe.

Today is a Tuesday, though, and Tuesday is his designated 'don't look for HYDRA' day. He's read that sticking to a schedule can help relieve some stress. A structure is important when recovering from PTSD. Is structure important when recovering from 70 years of brainwashing? He isn't sure.

Instead of following his desire to find and eliminate every person ever associated with HYDRA, he lounges on his bed, which is just a series of mismatched couch cushions he stole that's covered with a sheet and a pile of warm blankets. Sokovia has beds. People sell things in Sokovia, like furniture. They have a fucking Starbucks. The Soldier likes living like this. It reminds him of home, whatever that is.

His journals are scattered around the bed. On a good day, he reads through them, writing down or drawing what he can remember. It's mostly full of the Captain, the man on the bridge, skinny and angry, large and angry, naked and hard, sick and dying, being a general pain in his ass. The Soldier feels like he knows Captain Rogers even though he doesn't remember much of anything.

The Soldier settles on his cushion pile, opens a journal to a picture of the Captain as he was during World War II and smiles to himself. He’s almost fallen asleep when he hears the commotion outside. His apartment’s far off from the town square but a couple hundred angry people make a lot of racket.

There's been an explosion to the north in the old munitions factory.

He doesn’t run but walks briskly towards the town square. A Stark robot is trying to offer assistance to a crowd of increasingly agitated locals.

What Tony doesn’t seem to understand is that oppressed people are, at minimum, really fucking distrusting of cops. It’s worse when they’re cops from other countries. It’s even worse when those cops are robots designed and built by the company that sold the bombs to the country that bombed a school because of some incorrect intel.

They may feel sympathy for a human, but a robot is just unfeeling metal programmed by a rich guy who inherited an empire built on blood.

The Soldier stares while people start getting violent with the Starkbot. He thinks, for a moment, that the cost of that robot probably could’ve paid for replacing all of the infrastructures the Americans and Soviets destroyed over the last couple of decades. It’s not Stark’s responsibility, of course, but if he really wants to defeat terrorism or whatever it is the Avengers do now, well, money and infrastructure get more done than guns.

He chucks the cabbage at the Starkbot before heading home. He’s not going to do any work today.

—

A few days later, Stark accidentally starts an apocalypse.

There’s a rumbling in Novi Grad. Branko told Emilija he had seen strange happenings at the old factory a few days after the Avengers (don't think about how close the Captain was, Soldier) left. Emilija told her sister who told their father. The news got to Lazar, who told the Soldier as he was purchasing some ground meat from the butcher.

“Can you imagine, Jakov?” Lazar asks, handing the package to the Soldier. “Stark’s robots up to something in that dreadful place?”

The Soldier gives an easy placative smile. “I’m sure it’s just a kid’s overactive imagination.”

He is absolutely certain there are Stark robots doing something stupid in Novi Grad.

The Soldier runs the rest of his errands without rushing. He mentally maps out what he knows about the abandoned munitions factory, how long it will take him to get there to scope the place out. He packs light, hopes he doesn’t have to get into a heavy firefight. The Starkbots are fragile, he knows from experience and can be taken out with a well-placed knife.

If the Avengers are there? Well.

The old factory turns out to be where Hydra was hiding their base. Good to know. It was on his map anyway.

He enters through an unused ventilation shaft large enough for him to shimmy through. Climbs to the heart of the building where he hears voices and the sound of metal on metal.

The scene reminds him a bit of Fantasia, one of the few movies he's seen. He was completing an assassination of a prime minister or a governor or something while the movie was playing in his living room. The Soldier was entranced, manage to watch the entire thing before his handlers arrived to extract him.

Instead of brooms, it's robots. Starkbots. Lining the walls and wandering around, building and digging and doing something.

The larger robot in the center of the room is talking to a pair of people - the twins, he realizes. He saw them once or twice when he first arrived in Novi Grad, knew about them because the elderly love talking his ear off about anything and everything. One of the side-effects of being over a hundred years old: old people _love_ him.

The way it talks reminds him of the newsreels he's seen of Stark. Reminds him of Howard ( _don't think about Howard or his wife, Soldier_ ). It is detailing a plan to make the Avengers pay for something. Bucky snorts, thinks Stark's got enough money to pay them whatever they want.

It's not a particularly funny observation, but it's the first joke he's made in 70 years.

It goes on and on about rebirth, dinosaurs, whatever. This is a recon mission and the Soldier's getting antsy. He could probably take out eight or nine Starkbots by himself, but there are at least two dozen in the building. The big one seems autonomous, dangerous. More difficult to kill something that can think for itself.

The Soldier mouths “what the fuck” to himself. He’s tired. He can turn around and go back to his apartment and forget all of this. Let someone else figure out what to do about weird rogue Stark bots.

The man - Pietro, he thinks - notices him and disappears. He's before the Soldier in the blink of an eye, pulls him to fall out of his perch and sticking a three-point landing.

“And who are you?” The bot begins, then stops. Its eyes widen as it processes the information before it.

“I know you,” the Stark-bot says. “The SHIELD files. HYDRA files. You’re the Winter Soldier. James Buchanan Barnes.”

Its face contorts to something like elation. “This is great!” Which, okay, is not usually how people greet him. There's usually a lot more screaming if they see him at all.

“Of all of the people on this planet, you appear to me. You have to understand why I’m doing this. This world is sick, diseased. What they did to you was unforgivable.”

James’s mouth twitches. Oh, _my god_ , this is robot Tony Stark. “Yeah, it was, and I don’t forgive the people who—“ _tortured, abused in every way, broke him down until there was nothing left and sent him to kill Howard and Maria and kids and_ Steve _oh god oh god_ “—did this. What’s that got to do with every other asshole on this rock?”

He takes a deep breath, centering himself. He’s OK. Nobody’s going to hurt him except for maybe the homicidal robot that talks like Tony fucking Stark and the robot is probably not as inventive as the Soviets.

The robot seems to deflate. "The only way to save this planet is to get rid of its largest threat," it says. "the Avengers."

—

The Soldier knows better than to try to talk a megalomaniac down. He stares down the robot - Ultron - and stays off to the side, observing but offering no opinion. This, to Ultron, is great. Guy loves an audience.

The shorter twin corners him while she and Pietro are preparing to leave for Korea. Something about a vision.

The Soldier's seen guys like this before. Grand ideas about changing the world and making people see. He's killed many of them for whoever happened to be his handler at the time.

“I could help,” Wanda says. She has him in a corner, and the Soldier's isn't sure if that's on purpose. “Your memory is disjointed, fractured in ways I have never seen. I can feel it from here. I—“

Pietro's fast, but Wanda's able to twist reality and minds. She's the most powerful person in the room, maybe on the planet, and she doesn't seem to realize it. The Soldier does not flinch, but it's a near thing.

The idea that someone wants to mess around in his head causes the Soldier to switch from generally uneasy to a low panic. He puts more space between him and the girl, leaning back against the wall, knowing that her twin could easily force him to bridge the gap, the speedy little fuck.

“No offense, but I’ve had enough of fucking Hydra scrambling my goddamn brains like Sunday brunch,” he hisses, voice slipping into an accent he doesn't have but that he recognizes. His body is tense and in a flash he’s twirled around, exposing his back and punching his metal arm into the wall. It’s a reflex, one he has no control over and that agitates him further. He breathes in the concrete dust and begins coughing.

“We are not Hydra,” Pietro says, standing behind Wanda, prepared to whisk her away if the Soldier is a threat.

Bucky snarls between coughs. “Don’t fuckin tell me you’re not Hydra. You let them experiment on you!”

The room is closing in. The dust isn't the only thing making it hard to breathe, doesn’t distract him from the feeling of his chest constricting. They let them touch and tear and they let them they _they he let them_ —

He collapses beside the hole he put in the wall, curls in on himself and feels like the sky is going to open up and drag him to space. It’s too close and too open and he shakes and sobs and gasps for breath—

He sees red.

The calm washes over him in a moment.

“Wanda—“ Pietro starts and the girl hushes him. She’s sitting in front of Bucky - James - the Winter Soldier, hands open, posture relaxed.

“We went to Hydra,” she offers with a soft smile. “Had we known what they did to you, we still may have made that decision, because we were doing what we thought was right. I am sorry for what they did to you. I am not sorry for what we did to ourselves.”

The panic recedes in increments, partly Wanda and partly his body deciding the threat is over. He can remember a skinny punk who did something similar. The SSR wasn’t fucking Nazis but it’s not like America was a country of virtue back then. Who turned away the immigrants escaping Nazis, after all?

His ma described coming over as a kid, barely out of her teens and already carrying him, turmoil and discrimination kicking up even then.

His ma—

_He remembers his ma._

Freddie and George and Becca and Alice and Ruth. Sarah. _Steve_. His Stevie.

Wanda nods like she can read his mind. “I can’t change what was done to you, but I can try to help you recover lost things. I won’t touch your mind unless you ask.”

It’s a bad idea. If she triggers the wrong memory — god forbid his code words — she may end up dead. He’s certain neither of them is able to handle a fully functional Winter Soldier despite Wanda's untapped potential. The more paranoid part of him knows that she could trigger the Winter Soldier to use for her own gain. Wanda's sweet. Sweeter people have used him before.

He looks at Wanda with a half smirk, eyes flat. “I need time. I don’t really trust either of you Nazi-collaborating fucks, full offense.”

Wanda smiles and nods, standing and backing away. “It is just an offer. I recommend you seek actual therapy to help with what you are going through, in addition to my help.” She tilts her head to one side. “Medication won’t work on you, and it may be impossible for you to get to a good place without it. I can help.”

Wanda looks over her shoulder as she leaves.

“Before all of this, I wanted to be a counselor, therapist. Help the people of my home,” Wanda muses.

The twins and Ultron leave. Only Ultron comes back.

—

James took the time to lay C4 charges all along the compound while Ultron was gone. He could still be monitored through the other bots, but he was, at some point, the Winter Soldier. If there's anyone on the planet who can sabotage a compound without being caught, it's him. Plus, Ultron's Stark's robot and has all of Stark's flaws.

Things go to shit rapidly after Ultron returns.

Ultron reveals that his plan is to actually destroy the world, not just the Avengers. And, yeah, James saw that coming a mile away. The twins ditched him after that, which means James is his only audience.

James thinks he's nuts, but what can he do about it? Wanda's a smart kid. He imagines she's bringing reinforcements. He'll give her a few hours before he blows the place. He isn't entirely sure if the chain reaction would cause the city to collapse in on itself, and he would rather wait to see what the Avengers come up with.

The Avengers, as it turns out, have no plan. Bucky's pretty sure they never have any plans. This is why most of their ops have so many casualties.

Bucky's hauling ass back to his apartment to pack up his stuff and get the hell out of here when the Falcon crashes down in front of him, one of his wings on fire. Bucky groans for the first time in decades and helps the man up and puts out the fire (not in that order).

"Thanks, I— Barnes?" the man asks, exasperated.

"Uh," Bucky replies.

"Oh my god what are you even- You know what? I don't care. Are you going to try to kill us? Are you working for Ultron?"

Bucky tilts his head, gives a half shrug. The Falcon curses but seems to accept that answer. Bucky isn't actively planning on killing anyone, but he does have a plan on how to kill anyone within a hundred feet of him at any given time. Red Room training.

Ultron is powering up his machine. If it gets too high the city will crash back to Earth, killing everyone.

"Do you know Ultron's plan?" he asks. The Falcon nods.

"OK. I am going to blow up his machine. Are you prepared to evacuate civilians if the city collapses?"

"What?" the Falcon asks, then repeats what Bucky told him for his earpiece. "No, I am telling you it's the Winter Soldier and he's offering to blow the engines up for us. Well, I don't know, Iron Man, why don't you come down here and ask him?"

They don't really have time to argue. So, Bucky detonates the explosives right as the machines begin powering up.

The shockwave rocks the city like an earthquake. Some buildings collapse and, yeah, there's still the issue of the fucking homicidal robots, but all of the bots are howling with rage at the same time, calling to rip Bucky apart, which he is not supportive of.

He breaks off from the Falcon and heads for his apartment, only to find that it's already collapsed, either from the quake or from the robots tearing through the rubble. He wonders if he can salvage something from it until a missile hits it.

Bucky ducks under the cover when a stupidly patriotic shield flies over his head, knocking between two bots, decapitating both of them.

Ah, the feeling of terror and patriotism. In a situation like this, he can either cow or run.

He does neither. Bucky launches forward and sucker punches Steve in the jaw. Captain America stumbles back, clutches his jaw and stares at Bucky with a wounded expression.

“You’re a fucking punk!” Bucky yells, ignores that the Widow standing nearby, wondering if she should shoot him.

“What.” Steve replies, eyes wide, rubbing the red that’s already fading. Steve's face goes red with righteous bald eagle fury. “What— Why are you mad at me?“

“Star-spangled man with a plan my ass,” he exclaims. He ignores Steve. This is Bucky time. "You showed up here with no fucking plan. What if I hadn't been here, Steve? What if I didn't plant explosives? Were you just going to let Ultron drop a city on the planet you _dick cheese fuck ass pinhead_?"

“Bucky—“ Steve tries.

“If you had just stayed in Brooklyn like you were _supposed to_ —“ Bucky continues, frenzied. Natasha considers throwing herself off the floating city.

“Jesus, Mary, ‘n’ Joseph. Bucky, shut the fuck up for two seconds!” Steve yells.

Bucky does. He glares at Steve, cheeks red with exhilaration. Steve is reminded of Brooklyn all those years ago, Bucky upset at him for getting the shit beat out of him after punching a guy who suggested Bucky was a fairy. Steve didn’t have a good response then, when Bucky was furious at him, demanding why he cared.

A faint voice can be heard from Steve’s earpiece. “Did Cap just say fuck?”

The Widow sighs.

"Are you OK?" Steve asks.

He can tell it's the wrong thing to say because Bucky immediately takes a breach, voice high and a little frantic. "Am I OK? Are you asking me if _I'm_ OK?"

Right. He's going to blow up again. So Steve does now what he always did to win fights he couldn't win logically. Launches himself at Bucky, smashes their lips together. Their teeth clack, opening a cut on Bucky's bottom lip; Bucky opens his mouth on instinct, lets Steve taste him for the first time in 70 years.

It’s nice.

Steve’s brain gets so caught up in Bucky’s taste, being able to touch him for the first time in so long, oh god Bucky’s here that he almost doesn’t notice the Ultronbot sneaking up on them. Almost.

He spins Bucky around, whipping the shield at the bot, decapitating it. The shield comes back and he lets it drop to the floor. Bucky laughs against his neck, still blushing. Natasha is standing to the side and wishes the ground would swallow her up from the third wheel hell she’s in. She should have stayed with Ultron.

“Hey, punk,” he says with a dopey smile on his face.

Steve’s smile mirrors his. “Hey, jerk.”

“I hate to break up your frankly disgusting reunion but we still have a problem,” Natasha yells over the sound of a billion angry robots trying to locate them.

Then Nick Fury shows up, dramatically.

—

Bucky doesn’t have time to care, but he'll be mad about his journals later. There was a lot of information in them that he didn't always remember. The moment they get on the helicarrier Fury tries to have Bucky put in handcuffs and Natalia backs him up.

Steve puts himself between them and Bucky, shield clutched in his hand. By the clench of his jaw, Bucky can tell that he’s considering a) throwing them both off the helicarrier or b) punching every person on the helicarrier. Both options are better than letting Bucky be taken by people who were too blind to notice HYDRA in their midst.

Stark lands, opens his face mask. “Are you really going to let the man who killed my parents walk around free?” Stark says, voice steel, face red and angry.

Steve shoots back. “I won't let anyone hurt him.”

“He still did it.” The man focuses his gaze on Bucky. “How the hell do you live with yourself after what you did?”

“I don’t give a fuck what you think, Stark,” Bucky laughs, bitter. Tired of being guilty. “Your fucking robot destroyed my apartment. Your bombs killed their family.” He motions to the twins who are trying their best to not be part of this conversation.

Stark flinches back. “I’m trying to do better!”

“So am I!” Bucky shouts. "At least my bombs saved a city from crashing to the fucking ground."

Natalia, the traitor, speaks before Stark can start shrieking. “I want to trust him, but you’ve seen the files, Steve. You know what they did.” She glances at Bucky. "Can he even trust his own mind?"

“He is right here,” Steve snaps. “You could ask him."

Natalia levels a look at him. “I'm not saying we lock him up indefinitely or hand him over to the feds. I'm on your side. We need to run tests - psych evals, physicals. Someone needs to look at that arm."

Bucky considers slinking away, but Steve clutches his flesh hand in his. Steve's got that look, the one that says he's prepared to fight a thousand people twice his size. Golly he’s going to die next to Steve like he’s always wanted. Golly gee gosh. Fuck.

“Can we compromise?” Bucky pipes up because months of self-reflection has made him open to how unfair the world is. Steve squeezes his hand tighter. “I’ll go wherever you want, do your tests. Steve stays with me.” The ‘so he can break me out if necessary’ is implied.

"You sure, Buck?" he asks. Bucky can tell that Steve is fully prepared to escape with him. Steve. Sweet Stevie. Even after all these years and at least two murder attempts, he's Bucky's guy. Always on his side. Willing to run away from his new friends.

Bucky may be a little in love. May have loved him for 80 or 90 years.

He lets out a soft sigh. "Yeah, Stevie. I got you with me, after all."

—

Steve fidgets, avoiding Bucky's gaze. Bucky's official release from held custody is tomorrow. A month and a half of tests and more tests and a secret tribunal ended with Bucky where he started, more or less. A free honorably discharged prisoner of war with 70 years of backpay.

Steve had used his Captain America is Disappointed face when testifying.

His fleet of doctors helped to keep him from being required to work for SHIELD or any other agency as a bargaining tool. Bucky suffers from a host of issues, least of all being war-related PTSD. He would make for a risky operative at best.

Tony, too, eventually came around after his wife needled him enough. She did it more for his sake than Bucky's, wanted Tony to stop guilt tripping over his relationship with his parents and his own contributions to ruining lives. Also, therapy. Lots of therapy. Couples therapy for him and Pepper, one-on-one therapy, couple's therapy for him and Steve, him and Rhodey.

With the combined threatening power of Tony and Steve, Bucky got off light.

"Do you want to move in with me?" Steve asks, rushed out with a breath. Bucky smiles as Steve continues. "New place. My old apartment is pretty small and I wanted. To give you. Uh. I don't if you, y'know, remember. We said we'd get a big place after the war. Dogs and cats."

Bucky smiles around his bagel and speaks with a full mouth. "You know, after all those fucking speeches you'd think you would know how to speak like an adult."

Steve laughs, some of the tension bleeding from his shoulders. "I'm trying to be serious, ya jerk."

"You tried to convince me you weren't allergic anymore, said you'd buy me as many cats as I want." Bucky blinks, brow furrowing. "I think you told me you'd find a cat to prove it to me? This was after Azzano, right? Right after? You carrying me out of the burning building kinda after?"

Steve nods, eyes shining the way they do when Bucky remembers something right. This is a new thing with them, being ready to tear up or cry on a dime. It's nice, even if they're both ugly criers.

"You scolded me in my tent about bad timing. God, you were mad but you didn't want anyone to hear you," Steve muses, sniffing a little. "Then you asked if you could 'touch my tits.'"

Bucky snorts. "I don't remember asking." He does remember planting his face in the middle of Steve's chest and motorboating him. Then Steve showing him just how much strength his new body had.

He's finishing his coffee while Steve stares at him expectantly. Steve cracks after several minutes of silence. "You gonna answer me, punk?"

"Yeah, Stevie. I'd love to live with you." Steve practically lived in the SHIELD-provided apartment that Bucky was confined to for the duration of his quarantine anyway.

—

House hunting with Steve is a special kind of hell.

Not because of Steve. Steve's great. He loves Steve. They even agree on all of their must-haves (and they have a long fucking list), because if they have money they may as well fucking use it and it's not gentrification if they lived there first (probably). It just seems that they talk to real estate agents who look at their list of wants and then toss them out and suggest showing them condos on Long fucking Island.

Bucky would rather be dead in Brooklyn than alive anywhere on Long fucking Island. He'd rather be in Jersey. Not Jersey City. New Jersey.

Steve also tends not to account for the fact that Bucky is (rightfully) paranoid.

_"What about this one, Buck?"_

_"Is that a fucking condo?"_

_"Yeah?"_

_"Steve I can't have twenty dogs in a fucking condo. You know what happens in condos? Neighbors. Neighbors on every side of you. You know who our neighbors usually are, Steve? HYDRA and SHIELD and FB fucking I."_

_Steve turns back to the laptop and moves on to another listing._

_"No condos or apartments. Got it."_

It's Pepper Potts, Stark's vastly better half, who ends up finding them a five-story townhouse in Brooklyn Heights for the reasonable price of almost four million dollars. She knows a guy who knows the owner is selling soon and asks if they want the first chance to bid.

It's not a good deal. Bucky about has a heart attack when he hears the price ( _"Inflation's a hell of a thing, Buck. It's not that expensive when you look at the numbers." Steve lied through his teeth._ ). The bathroom isn't even that nice. Not that Bucky would complain because he's lived his life without working shows but actually that's exactly what he's going to do. He's had nothing to do but watch HGTV for eight weeks while a faceless government decided if he should be executed or not. He wants a nice shower. A shower he can sit in for twenty minutes every morning (down from an hour, which is down from six hours, which is down from sometimes spending the entire day under a constant stream of hot water).

70 years didn't make Bucky a diva. He's always liked nice things he couldn't really afford. Except he can afford them now, thanks to a ridiculous military budget that can afford to grant him 70 years of backpay without blinking an eye.

Steve promises him they'll fix whatever isn't right about the house personally. No contractors more than necessary, no strangers in their walls. He'll personally rip all the flooring out, tear down all the walls, tile the bathroom himself if it will make Bucky happy.

They start with the basement, ripping out the walls and polishing concrete. Neither of them knows how to operate the washing machine or dryer set in the laundry room. They're honestly terrified to try. This will be a problem when they run out of clothes.

Bucky orders American flag-themed furniture for their main room because he's a fucker. Most of it is made in Taiwan or China, except for the hideous custom couch he commissioned. It's a large thing, taking up a good amount of space in the main room. The top couch cushions are overstuffed, and each cushion is an individual American flag.

Steve looks torn between laughing and crying when he sees Bucky lounging it. He collapses on top of Bucky with his full weight, crushing him into the couch like a particularly tired golden retriever.

"This is a comfortable couch," Steve mumbles into the cushion. Bucky laughs.

They keep the couch and donate the rest of the stuff to Goodwill. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I like to think that after Bucky's started managing his PTSD and his probably long list of other problems that he gets very dramatic about everything because he's a hundred years old and he deserves it.


End file.
